This invention relates to food processing machinery, and more particularly to packaging machines such as stuffing machines of the type which make sausages and similar stuffed meat and stuffed food products. Most particularly, this invention relates to a stuffing machine incorporating a looper assembly, and a product spring support for casing exiting the casing brake.
Sausage making and the making of similar stuffed meat and food products have become highly automated. As a result of significant, valuable research in the United States, a variety of machines have been successfully developed for the automated and semi-automated production of stuffed sausages, meats, and foods. One such machine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,713, issued on Aug. 30, 1988 to Alfred J. Evans, for a Packaging Device Including Dual Clip Attachment Apparatus, incorporated by reference. In a machine such as that disclosed in the identified patent, sausage material is pumped from a vat to a stuffing horn assembly. Shirred casing is applied over the end of a stuffing horn. The casing and material pumped to the horn leave the horn simultaneously, through a casing brake. The stuffing material fills the casing and the casing maintains the material under slight pressure. The casing brake permits the casing to exit under uniform tension. Adjacent the casing brake, dual product clippers intermittently acts to void the casing past the brake and clip the stuffed casing, to define the end of an exiting product and the beginning of the next product. A looper mechanism downstream of the clippers feeds hanging loops to the downstream clipper, where the loops are attached under the downstream clips.
Other notable machines are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,675,945 issued on June 30, 1987 to Alfred Evans et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,847,953 issued July 18, 1989, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/352,885 filed May 17, 1989 in the names of Alfred J. Evans and R. Clay Dunigan entitled Improved Semi-Automatic Stuffing Machine, Casing Brake and Turret Assembly, now abandoned all incorporated by reference. In the machines of the identified patent and applications, mechanisms are provided for movement of the casing brake, to intermittently relieve tension on the casing during clipping of product.
While the machine of U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,713 has proven highly desirable, some users of the machine have desired to fill casings in excess of recommended diameters. To date, no machines have been able to accomplish such overstuffing without cutting of the product casing under the loops.